I'd seen a million tumblr posts, each with thousands of notes, and they'd all be quotes from a book; 10 Things We Did And Probably Shouldn't Have, (by Sarah Mlynowski) so being as curious as I was, I thought I'd give it a go.
The main character, April, is 16 years old and gets thrown into a situation where she saw only one option. Her father and step-mother are moving away but there is no way she is leaving her friends and her beloved Noah, so she does what every normal teen does, moves in with her parentless best friend.
The book doesn't have a strong plot, but it gets away with it because each chapter is a new part of the '10 things' list. The biggest focus of the book and this part of April's life is losing her virginity. Personally I feel like it focuses way too much on that aspect and not enough on the details of living with Vi without supervision, or spending time with her boyfriend, or hanging out with Marissa and Joanna. Also, the fact that her father agreed to this set up and offered her £1400 a month to live on was very unrealistic.
Despite this, I feel like the characters were realistic. Each of them had flaws especially Noah, he definitely was a 'party pooper', and I feel like it was obvious from the beginning that their relationship wouldn't last. Noah never seemed to be that interested in what April was doing, only when Hudson was around, which is why I thought that she would have realised he wasn't the one earlier, but nope, she was still completely in love with him.
Dean and Hudson were the life of the party and without them two the book would have been very boring, but I am glad that April ended up with Hudson. Dean and Vi was a nice relationship development, although I think it happened too quickly. Vi was so adamant that nothing was going to happen between them and then all of a sudden she has plans to sleep with him.
Vi was a strong character, she had obviously learned to build up this strength due to her mother's absence and it is nice to see her as a role model to April and even Pinky. She was very sure of herself and had mature views and usually made mature decisions so Vi was certainly a better housemate option than Marissa.
Parts of the story irritated me, like how they decided they fancied a hot tub and all of a sudden they bought one, using up April's allowance. Why would you just spontaneously buy a hot tub? Why would Vi need a hot tub as a seduction prop? It did add a few more interesting parts to the novel but the whole "i want a hot tub, lets go get a hot tub" thing annoyed me.
Another thing that irritated me was Corinne running over April's cat. That was just completely unnecessary. I feel like it was only included to make the novel longer and Mlynowski could definitely have gone in another direction when trying to bring Hudson and April together. Hudson always came to her resuce so its no suprise he lent her the $2000+.
Speaking of Hudson, I'm still unsure why his job as a nanny was as secretive as it was. Again, Mlynowski could have gone in a different direction and maybe he should have been an undercover cop or even an escort.
Overall, I think I'd give it 2/5. It was an easy read, nothing challenging, nothing new. I didn't gain a lot from reading it.
I feel like the book was rushed, everything was concluded all at once, things developed too quickly and we didn't even get to see the backlash of Alril coming clean to her father.
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